Journal
JOURNAL OF BIOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 121, Issue 2, Pages 154-164Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbiotec.2005.07.003
Keywords
furfural reductase (FFR); furfural reduction; furfuryl alcohol; Escherichia coli
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Furfural, an inhibitor of ethanol production from hemicellulose acid hydrolysates, is reductively detoxified to furfuryl alcohol by the ethanologenic bacterium Escherichia coli strain LYO1. Furfural reductase was purified 106-fold from this bacterium to approximately 50% homogeneity. It has a native molecular mass of 135 kDa, determined by gel filtration, and subunit molecular mass of similar to 68kDa, determined by denaturing gel electropboresis, indicating the holoenzyme is a dimer of two similar if not identical subunits. The enzyme shows strong activity from pH 4 to 8 (optimum pH 7.0), relatively high temperature tolerance (50-55 degrees C), and an apparent K-m and V-max for furfural of 1.5 x 10(-4) M and 28.5 mu mol/min/mg of protein, respectively. It catalyzes the essentially irreversible reduction of furfural with NADPH, is specific for NADPH as. cofactor, and is relatively specific for the reduction of furfural and benzaldehyde; 2-acetylfuran, xylose, and glucose were not reduced, while acetaldehyde was reduced at a rate 25-fold lower than furfural. This is the first description of a furfural reductase which, based upon size and substrate specificity, appears to represent a new type of alcohol-aldehyde oxido-reductase. The conversion of relatively toxic furfural to less toxic furfuryl alcohol suggests a beneficial role for this enzyme in mitigating furfural toxicity encountered during ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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